weeyin

Aye, and Henrik will rupture a ligament watching it on telly.

Certainly a reasonable Plan B.

Agree with all of that. Although, to be fair, the Well Society was really the only avenue available to the club at the time, and if it didn't exist, we could have been in serious financial trouble. Hopefully the new soft loans will be made as planned next month and our cash flow will be in better shape for the transfer window.

Is it too much to hope that St. Johnstone get a much deserved win tonight after Rangers kick them off the park injuring half a dozen of their best players?

The SPL came about for the simple reason that Rangers and Celtic wanted to play each other as often as possible every season. They milked that dry and so the newer formats were created. They continue to milk the current format dry and the other clubs just bend over and take it. I'm not sure why you think there is quick fix. When a situation is allowed to develop over a number of years, and some of its participants have facilitated the decline, the fix is not likely to be anything other than a longer term process. Some ideas (which are hardly radical) might include: 1) Getting rid of the man who can't find a sponsor for the league and who is on record as saying it doesn't concern him. 2) Bringing in someone who can get a sponsor for the league. 3) Bringing in someone who talks the game up and markets it properly instead of talking it down, and broadcasting doom and gloom about the lack of Rangers. 4) Splitting the league revenues more equitably between teams. 5) Stop messing around with schedules so fans can plan to attend games. 6) Get rid of the split in the league 7) Related to 6), stop playing the same teams so often 8. Getting a winter break in. What in reality is going to happen is that, once Rangers are back in the top flight, magically a league sponsor will appear and 90% of the money will be sent directly to the OF. They will continue to take an unfair share and more clubs will end up going to the wall. And everybody will be afraid to vote against the OF because half the chairmen in the country are fans of one side or the other, and the other half only care about the short term viability of their club - not the long term viability of the game.

So what is the answer when you have a small squad with injury problems and a few players out of form?

"Administration induced relegation"? I think you made that one up.

Erwin deserved his chance over Clarkson every day of the week. If he didn't get a promoted to the first team squad this season, the U20s might as well pack up and go home. Of course, nobody would have predicted Sutton would be as ineffective as he has been, but with him, Erwin and Moore on the books, it really didn't make as much sense as signing Ojamaa. It's easy to say Clarkson would have been a better option now (although 1 game against us is hardly a benchmark), but at the time, I didn't hear many complaining about Henrik's signing.

Damn.

I hope someone scores. I'd hate to lose 1 - 0 to a soft goal in the 2nd minute.

The Board aren't stupid - they will make the right decision when it has to be made. Threads like this, however, make me cringe.

As far as budgets go, a few things have bitten us: a) getting papped out of cups earlier than expected far too often b) lack of a league sponsor c) falling crowds d) shh, whisper it, no Rangers in the top league.

Davie Hay too. Even when you hear him talk, it seems like he enjoyed his time at Motherwell the most.

Nielsen was OK in his last run of games. Twardzik is not the goalkeeping guru many on here claimed he was going to be. Pretty much a wash at the moment.

A couple of arguments against would be it's likely only short term and McLean hasn't managed a team for 16 years.

Usually when the team is playing OK so the crowd and the expectation doesn't get to them.

McCall tried variants of 4-3-2-1 when he came here and it failed every time - both with Sutton and Higdon as the 1. It lead to many people on hear screaming for him to give up on it because it was so useless.

Ever consider that's because the move to 10 teams was to let the OF skim the profits and that model has ruined the game?

Be cheaper and easier all round if we just win our next 2 games.

I know we are dire right now, but we really shouldn't be worrying about the other teams' results in October.

All the teams in the SPFL are professional. That's what the "P" stand for. If you mean we don't have enough full-time professional teams, we have certainly had part-timers in the top flight before. I wasn't being completely serious with 18 teams (although throw Hearts, Hibs, Rangers, Falkirk, QoS & Raith Rovers into the mix, and we wouldn't be far away). However, I'd rather see a league where we played each other twice and had a winter shutdown than a league with a split and a 7 game January fixture list.

I thought good keepers were responsible for organizing the defence? Or is that criticism just saved for Gunnar?

He never said Clarkson wasn't good enough. He said he didn't think he was the kind of striker we needed. Plus we still have Moore to come back into the squad later in the season. Given that Sutton and Erwin were crying out for an Ojamaa type support player and we brought in Ojamaa, I don't have any big disagreement with that. The problem is it hasn't worked out - but you can at least see the logic behind that thinking.

We didn't have cash to pay for Faddy last season (it came out the Directors' pockets). Given how long it took him to find a club this season, we weren't the only one's questioning his value. Law & Reid's salary combined is probably less than we paid Faddy. Tough financial decisions to make, and easy to complain about when we are playing mince. There is no way Fadddy's loss is responsible for the complete meltdown of the squad this season, though.

18 team league. 34 game season. Winter shutdown.